Category: Reflections

Our first week of second semester is over! I’m pleased to report that everyone survived, but it was a close call for a few. Of course, I was prepared for a few back to school crazies, but it was doubly concerning as we had those snow days before break too. It’s been a while since these kids have had a truly normal week. I spent two days reviewing what the kids had done during their vacations. (To do this I used ¿Qué hiciste este fin de semana? by The Storyteller’s Corner which I read as a book since I don’t have my own room. My predecessor left behind several of her materials in a file, I pulled out the school’s binding machine and have been putting them to great use! If you need printable, easy, engaging readers then check out her TpT store!) That was fun, but by Wednesday we really needed to get back on schedule. So, with Capibara Con Botas books in hand, (Read more about this book here.) we began our math lesson. This idea came from Matt Miller during DitchSummit18. Maybe he’s not the first to come up with it, but he had the idea during one of the sessions and I thought it seemed great, so I rewrote my lessons to include it. Good golly people, they enjoyed the novelty of this! Here’s how it went:

I drew a graph for them. I used emojis as the y-axis: at the top was the wide grin, then the one with no mouth (used for unknown or unclear) then sad, scared, and angry at the very bottom. I used the chapter numbers for the x-axis, we were on chapter ten, so I had ten columns. This was already prepared before class, all I had to do was open the file and review the emotion words. With a higher level or after having done this a few times, maybe I would let the kids choose which emojis and what order to place them in. Honestly, creating a logically ordered spectrum of emotions was harder than I expected it to be, I went by the order I would rather experience.

Then we created a list of all the characters we could remember (book use was highly encouraged) and we chose a different color for each character. I was very impressed by their recollection of characters. They did remember everyone! That was a nice confidence builder for me. As they listed characters, I would ask the kids which color they preferred for the character then write the name underneath the graph. (Sidenote: Thank you, Mira Canion, for having only a limited number of characters, it exactly matched my number of colors. I had not thought to count that before.) When I do this again, I will write the names into a box which will be the key, so it more accurately reflects a mathematical/scientific graph.

Finally, I instructed the students to open their books to chapter one. I asked them how Carlos, the main character, was feeling and plotted it on the graph. Then we moved to chapter two with Carlos. After Carlos’ emotions had been plotted and the connecting lines drawn, I moved on to the next character we had listed and we flipped back to chapter 1. I had considered going by chapter instead of by character, but I’m glad I focused them on characters instead of chapters because it got them thinking more deeply about a single character’s experience. This deeper thought was necessary for times when the character didn’t appear in the following chapter. When we didn’t know, we thought back on what the character had last experienced or what we knew of their personality and guessed. For the most part, we did not need to rely on the unclear emoji once a character had been introduced to the book. (Sidenote: I had no intention of plotting characters in the chapters preceding their introduction, but the kids insisted on plotting every line fully and I was more interested in celebrating their engagement.)

After plotting out the two easiest characters, I allowed them to choose who we plotted next for the remainder of the activity. After they started getting the hang of what we were doing I began asking them for evidence and encouraging them to read from the book to explain why they thought a character felt a certain way. High schoolers might not need prompting for evidence and could be expected to do it at the onset of the activity, but as I teach elementary I always try to build confidence with an activity before stepping up the rigor. (Plenty of people say that elementary teachers coddle too much, if this is true then I am fine with being in the wrong until someone can convince me that it is bad for my students.) For example, in the prior chapter one character had been happy, so they told me that the character was happy in the next chapter too. I asked them to prove it and they realized that the character suffered an injury during the next chapter and had to reevaluate their decision. That was cool to watch. After that they had to prove every answer, whether or not it was obvious. This went well because it was a logical transition in expectation.

We only have 30-minute classes, so we didn’t have time to map every character, but they loved doing this so much that I wished I had continued it a second day. I didn’t because I felt it had served its purpose of reminding the kids about the story, and I wanted to redirect their energy to the book instead of keeping it on the graph. I feel this kind of shift helps them maintain excitement more than continuing something they’ve become completely comfortable with, especially in a week where I was expecting issues with remembering our rules and routines. This was the right choice for me and this group but could certainly be handled in several other ways. For example, after plotting the two easiest characters (with all of the others being mostly equal in difficulty) this could have become an individual or small group activity where they need to plot the remaining characters themselves and write out the sentence that supports each point, or choose one to present to the class with supports, and that’s just ideas off the top of my head.

Now, a couple of notes that should be kept in mind: first, as mentioned before, if you plan on color-coding your plot lines then be sure to count your characters and available colors. Second, as this book has around eight paragraphs in each chapter it is unusual that a character seriously changes from beginning to end, so for me it was easy enough to choose a single emotion. Consider the amount of action that takes place in each chapter and be sure your students will be able to choose one feeling. Certainly we could have had a very long discussion about the previously-mentioned, injured character. He did begin the chapter quite optimistically and ended it in agony, we could have plotted him with more detail but didn’t. Think about the level of analysis that your students would apply. My crew is more than 75% boys, they just don’t nit-pic emotional status the way a group of 75% girls might. Or maybe it is that they are 90% competitive so when they all agree then they obviously all won, and a less competitive class might respond differently? I don’t know, all I can say is this went well for us but consider how your class handles emotion before over-simplifying as I did. Certainly, you could identify key actions in the book instead of chapters which would require more language but be easier when putting emotion into single points on a plot line.

Either way, this activity was a great success for me, and if you try it in your class I’d love to hear all about it! What book are you reading? How did you arrange your x and y axis? Was it a fun break from your “normal” language lessons?

Ditch Summit 2018 is a wrap now! Did you participate? I love the Ditch Summit because I can never quite guess what the topics will be. I even avoid checking people out ahead of time because I love being surprised by the topics. The one that blew my mind was the final session with James Clear on habits. I am also re-writing my lesson plans for next week to include an activity that Matt thought up during the session on visual learning. Ultimately, I don’t think I’m the target audience for the Ditch Summit, because it focuses so heavily on technology integration in classes which just isn’t something I’m doing yet. That being said, I never know what amazing ideas or techniques I’m going to pick up. There is so much material presented in the sessions that I have found something invaluable every year. If you missed it this year, then you need to plan on it for next year! I know I will!

First, let me tell you about the new lesson I’m creating. Here is the context you need: I planned to read all of Capibara con Botas by Mira Canion with my 5^th graders during the month of December. I laid it out so nicely, had two extra days in case we got off schedule (but the lesson schedule was beautiful, and would not have been a problem). Then we had THREE SNOW DAYS. You know how often it snows in December in Roanoke? Infrequently. You know how often snow accumulates in December? Almost never. For the first time ever I got seriously upset about snow days because they ruined my beautiful plan. I digress… Point is, instead of coming back having read an entire novel and having our slates totally clean for second semester, we have five more chapters to read. My bet? They remember very little about what is going on in the story. Worst of all, we aren’t going straight back into it, because we are going to talk about break first. Meanwhile, it will be three full weeks between reading chapter 9 and reading chapter 10. So, on Wednesday, after two days of discussing their winter breaks, we will work together to create an emotion chart. Like I said, this comes from the session on visual learning. On the Y-axis of a graph I will have a range of emotions, probably horrible, scared, sad, meh, content, and fantastic. On the X-axis I’ll list out chapters 1-9. Then we will go through the book talking about how a single character is feeling during each chapter and the students can watch the progression of emotions through time. We’ll chart each character in a different color, so they can all be on the same chart and we can see how they correlate (or seem to correlate) to each other. I think this is great! I can’t wait to see what they do with it, and I imagine it will provide tons of repetition for the events given that we must review each chapter from the perspective of five or six different characters (depending on how many we have time for). After this, I expect they will be totally ready for the last few chapters.

Now, my favorite session: Atomic Habits with James Clear. Atomic Habits is a book he has written about how to use mental habits to make life easier. He discusses the habits we have such as tying shoes, once it was very difficult, but after a bit of practice we can tie our shoes while simultaneously doing other mental tasks. This ability to “auto-pilot” through rote tasks allows us to be more productive, as long as we use this ability wisely. In the classroom, this can include tasks such as supply storage. Why waste time asking for and distributing, or even sharpening pencils? Keep a stash of sharpened pencils where you and the students can access it and let them grab pencils as needed or trade in dull pencils for sharpened ones. If they know the procedure, then they can even continue to be engaged in class while retrieving what they need. Passing out papers, opening class routines, and ending class routines can all be improved. Moreover, the way things are taught can be made into a habit as well. If students know the flow of class, they will be free to focus on the content. Focusing on the habits you want to form and the actions you want to discourage will help you evaluate how you set up your room and present information. The example James Clear gives is the television: if you want to watch less television then rearrange your living room to have a focal point other than the television or place your television in an armoire, like some hotels do, and put the remote away when the television is off. He justifies this by saying we do what we see, if you come home and sit on the couch then you will reach for the relaxation device that is most convenient. Put a book on the coffee table and you will probably read more, put a pad of paper on the coffee table and you will probably write more, but leave the remote on the table and you will probably keep watching too much television. Our classrooms are the same way, think about that if you are lucky enough to have walls of your own.

This was the third year of Ditch Summit, and I have to say, I think it was the best yet. Sure, I don’t have the access to technology to enrich my lessons with cool applications like Flipgrid, but at least I know what I could do when I do have the devices. There are plenty of reasons that I keep my classes low-tech, but I like to stay informed on what I could be doing. Maybe one day there will be a presentation that inspires me to incorporate laptops into my 30-minute classes, as I did when I taught 90 minute blocks, but until then Ditch Summit continues to provide me with low-tech brilliance while keeping me up to date with the latest in educational technology. If you want to know more about using technology to increase rigor and relevance in your classes, then definitely go check out Matt Miller at Ditch The Textbook. If you participated, what was your favorite session? What were your take-aways?

Jumping in with both feet has been very overwhelming. Honestly, it’s not the teaching that takes up so much time for me, it’s the learning! When I was told that my position was getting moved (this past April) I decided to learn as much as I could to be able to teach this new-to-me program in a way that thrilled me. This journey began at the FLAVA Spring Mini-Conference, which was awesome and gave me a lot of places to start in my learning. I looked for any Facebook group that I thought would help, bought a few books and looked for in person PD opportunities. I was ready for a PD-filled summer of attending the only free training I could feasibly reach and had a stack of books to read (teaching books, and novels that I intended to give to my kids). I even created a Twitter account, that I kept for almost 20 minutes before realizing that I have no idea how it works, and no time to teach myself. Then I went off to teach 6 weeks of summer school. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made all my own choices, and I regret none of them. I like being busy, and generally I am more productive when I have more to do. When I only have one or two tasks, I always feel like I can push them off until later, but when I have seven things that need to be done today I can do it! I’m not sure if that makes me weird or normal.

Back to being overwhelmed… I failed to consider that I had acquired/signed up for essentially an intensive two-month crash course in teaching with CEI. That was not reasonable when considering that I had to teach all day every day. Plus, a few days into the summer I sprained my dominant wrist, so I had a full-time job, nearly 3,000 pages of book to read in two different languages, a day-long PD six hours away, two 10-hour online PD courses, six hours of physical therapy a week and a distinct inability to brush my own hair. Oh yeah, and I had to move all my things out of my two old schools and into my three new schools. Looking back on it now, it’s not all that surprising I’m a little tired. It’s so easy to do though! The way I see it, two types of jobs lead to burnout – first is when nothing changes, seriously nothing, the tests don’t change, the program doesn’t change, the expectations don’t change, the books don’t change. I taught Spanish 1 the exact same way for nearly ten years, the first two using the high school version of our textbook, then using the elementary version. I burned out, it was awful, but my burnout lead to the creation of CUE (pronounced COO-eh) which I will blog about some other time, that proved to my principals and supervisor that I needed help not a new career. That is when I went to Va Tech for a new degree and endorsement (yep, did my M.Ed. full time in a year while teaching full time, have you noticed a pattern?), but that’s also when they canned my program and had us rebuild everything from scratch. My poor team had to meet me at the University center for hours of curriculum building instead of at a coffee shop or someone’s house because I had to go to class after all of our meetings, and couldn’t waste time with driving. Our program had to be rebuilt over the summer every year for three years in a row. That much change can burn you out too. This is the first year (in five) where something I’m doing now looks like something I did last year… one of my four preps is at entirely different schools, but it’s still mostly similar. Next year, I might be able to bump that up to four preps are mostly similar, but more than likely, I’ll have six preps between two schools instead of four preps at three schools. This much change also can’t be good for anyone. How do you maintain good mental health while never being able to predict what comes next? My current answer? Freak December snow-mageddons. I honestly didn’t think it would snow… but this is our third day off… so, I’m willing to admit I was wrong. Really though, the only cure or prevention I can find to burnout is excitement.

I bring excitement to the programs I love with meticulously thought out precision. I know that when I am excited I can get others excited. I find that genuine excitement will inspire those around you to respond in kind (as long as you aren’t like crazy-overbearing excited, that’s a fine line for me…) even if they have to fake it. But, that’s okay! Because it is seriously magical when someone who has faked for a while realizes that they aren’t faking anything, and have no idea when they actually became as excited as I am. I’ve done this recently with Capibara con Botas. I even told the kids before we started how nervous I was but told EVERYONE how pumped I was that this was even something that I thought we might be able to do. Now, kids who were noticeably less excited than I was when we started Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) at the beginning of the year are seriously excited about our book and are talking about it using fully correct sentences! What?! How does this happen?! Truthfully, I know how it happened, I made it happen. In doing so, I made myself significantly less likely to burnout again, despite the multitude of changes that I’m sure I’ll face again next year. And in spite of the fact that I still have about 700 of those 3000 pages to read, and my next free online PD that starts in two days, and that my lesson plans are now garbage after three snow days two weeks before winter break… But first, I’m going to remember all the reasons I have to be excited, and all the things I am thankful for, because enthusiasm and gratitude are the best tools I have to keep me who I want to be as a teacher. Happy snow days!

I am always on the lookout for free PD opportunities! Even if it’s not obvious to me how something might work in my class (coding on computers with kindergarten?) I can almost always find some nugget that inspires me somehow. One of my favorites is Ditch Summit. Aside from the fact that the host is a Spanish Teacher, he also does a great job with producing the videos. It’s time again for the Ditch Summit, and I’ve just signed up. Want to join me? Here’s what they want me to tell you:

It’s called the Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit. There are nine video presentations from awesome presenters on topics related to tech and solid teaching and learning. Get your free ticket at: DitchSummit.com.

HOW IT WORKS: New presentations are released every day from Dec. 14-22. They remain available until Dec. 31 so you can re-watch or catch up on any you’ve missed. They’re pre-recorded, so you can watch them whenever you want until Dec. 31. After that, the summit ends and the videos are unavailable to watch anymore.

FREE PD HOURS: You can get FREE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CREDITS for watching the videos. There’s a form to fill out after each presentation, and you’ll get an automatic PD certificate emailed to you.

Sign up for the digital summit at DitchSummit.com.

The schedule looks like this:

December 14 (Fri) — How Students Are Using Technology to Change the World (Ken Shelton, Disruptor, Keynote Speaker, Techquity Voice)

December 15 (Sat) — Building Relationships and Communicating with Students (Kim Bearden, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Ron Clark Academy)

December 16 (Sun) — Six Practical Ways to Amplify Learning with Technology (Matt Miller, Head Textbook Ditcher, Ditch That Textbook)

December 17 (Mon) — Appsmashing Your Way to Redefinition (Jornea Erwin, Head of Educator Innovation, Flipgrid)

December 18 (Tue) — Infusing Coding in Any Class (Bryan Miller, Co-Founder, TopTechEDU, Director of Education Strategy, Wonder Workshop)

December 19 (Wed) — Fantastic Learning Activities with Google Drawings (Tony Vincent, 5th grade teacher / LearningInHand.com)

December 20 (Thur) — Using Visual Thinking to Unlock Powerful Learning (Manuel Herrera, doodler and visual thinker)

December 21 (Fri) — Sparking Student Creativity and Creation with Video (Claudio Zavala, video/creativity/storytelling enthusiast)

Let me tell you about the time I accidentally did the instructional strategy that most intimidates me: MovieTalk. I was initially put off from this strategy because I worried about juggling the timing of pausing the videos, along with the language, and monitoring student behavior. It sounded like too much of a juggling act for me. Then I saw a version of it presented at Ed-Camp in Virginia Beach this past June, it was so cool! But then there was all the “in-fighting” surrounding the name. I’m just starting out, there is so much out there to learn – and as great as Facebook groups are for getting real advice and opinions, I couldn’t find anything about this technique that was free from the drama about what it actually means to “MovieTalk”. That’s fine, I’m not involved in that, my skills and analytical skill of my practice aren’t there yet. Alternately I benefit from those gurus who hone and perfect techniques in this way. But, this fervent discussion about what it is or isn’t only increased my fear. It was at the point where I thought my kids would know whether or not I was doing it right and would call me out if I did it wrong. I’m in all new schools this year, I am back to having to prove myself, I was not risking it. If I wanted to talk about a movie then I screen-shot the scenes I wanted to talk about and we went through it using a slide show, then they could see the video afterwards. You can call that whatever you want, I’m pretty sure it’s not MovieTalk. Regardless, on to the story:

I teach four different grade levels a day, each grouped together so I teach all of one grade then move on to a different grade. Before I started that last set of grade levels for the day, I thought through what I had planned, and I just wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t have the energy for it, I didn’t feel inspired by it, I was honestly considering faking sick just to get out of walking through that door. (I’ve never actually done that, but I was tempted, and half of my problem was that I didn’t feel 100% either.) I scanned my memory for what else might be on my jump drive with the daily lesson and settled on an animated fairy tale video. I did my standard opening with the group (day, date, weather, how are you) then started the movie. I paused the movie a few seconds in, because we were ahead of schedule and if I didn’t find some reason to stop the movie occasionally then I would have to come up with another activity for the class to do. Seriously, I was struggling to make it through the end of the day. I asked how the characters were feeling, it was easy for them because we had just reviewed all of this. A little bit of story line passed and I paused again, asked about emotions again, asked the kids if they were feeling the same emotion as the first character? No? Maybe you are feeling the same as the other character? Then I played the movie again. Then I paused it again. Halfway through class it strikes me that this is a form of MovieTalk. It’s not perfect, and perhaps it isn’t exactly what anyone else would have called MovieTalk, but here is this group of kids watching a video in a language they don’t speak yet. They are enraptured with trying to figure out how the characters are feeling so they can answer the next time I ask the question. I started all of my remaining classes at that level early for the rest of the week, so I could do the same lesson with them. By the end, I think the last class must have had 200 repetitions of “how is __ feeling?” which is more than I would have ever expected possible with 20 5-year-olds over 30 minutes. Bonus: One class has a substitute, who (I was told) went straight to the principal after school to tell her how great my lesson was and how much she learned. The substitute also came to me and said some very nice things.

This was a major win from a day that I just couldn’t do. And, it summarizes nicely how I feel about teaching with CEI. I have only been actively educating myself on these methods since about December 2017. I have been aware of many CEI techniques for years, but never devoted much time to figuring out how to integrate them into my classes. Now that I have, I’m never going back! I’m so lucky to be in an environment this year, which allows me the freedom to try absolutely anything with two of my grade levels with full support of my administration and my student’s parents. They are fully vested in what I’m doing and are pushing me to learn more, do better, get there faster. If you had told me in August that I would have spontaneously used a video to increase conversation before December, I’m not sure I would have believed you.

CEI is making my job easier and my teaching more effective. Is it doing the same for you? Have you ever been in a situation like mine? Better yet, what strategies intimidate you? Let’s conquer those fears together!

Hello, I’m so glad you’ve found me. I am working as quickly as I can to get all of the information in my head onto this website. Please excuse its emptiness right now, in life and in thinking: unpacking the boxes is a long, slow process. So far, I have focused all of my attention on building the structure. The best part of that is how well it keeps me focused on the specific goals I have for this site right now. The down side is that there are tumbleweeds everywhere! Please trust that the good stuff is coming! For starters:

PD Book reviews: While We’re On The Topic by Bill VanPatten, and The Natural Approach To The Year by Tina Hargaden and Ben Slavic

Student Book reviews: This list is incredibly long and includes most of Fluency Matters level 1 readers, a wide range of both Mira Canion and Craig Klein Dexemple, and some other finds like Bart Quiere Un Gato and Ataques De Hambre. In total I have around 40 titles already in line to get uploaded.

Blogs: Fall FLAVA – what I saw, talked about, and learned, Professional Observation – my takeaways from observing Brett Chonko in his classroom, and Learning from BVP – a reflection on his talk at Roanoke College on 29 October.

Thank goodness it’s almost Thanksgiving break! I’ll make some of these promises realities as soon as my interim grades are posted.